Charity & Community

Donation Requests

Please let me know if you have a "Silent Auction" fundraising event with your favorite charity and you would like to include my donation of a gift certificate for curly hair services.

Clear The Clutter

﻿I collect new and opened personal care products to be donated to local charities, such as Mary House / Loaves & Fishes. Bring your products to your next appointment and I will find them a new home.

Eco-Love Eco-Friendly Eco-Now Eco-Future

Let's make HCS the greenest, most curl-loving salon on precious Mother Earth.﻿﻿Get your beauty on at Hello Curls and make the earth a better place. Caring for natural curls and caring about nature (& the environment) look great together!

How?

Hello Curls Salon is doing extreme 5-Rs: Recycling, Reducing, Reusing, Repurposing and Refusing. And the best secret of all? It is easy.

Thankfully, I am not doing this alone. Here’s how YOU are going to help Hello Curls go super-green.

1. BYO-Bags for retail purchases. I am happy to help you carry items to your car (or bicycle).

2. Use concentrated products from Innersense that work great to keep your curls looking their best. Get more days out of your set, reduce number of shampoo-days at home and save prep time. Innersense products are safe for the environment (and safe for you) with certified organic ingredients, non-toxic/non-irritating chemicals, no animal testing, biodegradable packaging, and they are a “Bay Area Green Business”. Innersense works great on ALL hair types and ages. One line for everyone in your household.

3. One-use, cloth hand towels to be laundered, eliminating the use of paper towels in the bathroom. Filtered water and ice served in washable glasses, coffee and tea served in washable cups. Drop your recyclables in the HCS bins, even your leftover food will be composted. No waste!

4. Donate your unwanted personal care items (opened squeeze bottles are OK) to the HCS collection to be distributed to families in need through Mary House / Loaves & Fishes. Keep your bathroom clutter-free and help someone-in-need look and feel better about themselves. HCS will also sponsor clothing donation drives to WEAVE.

Read about Green Circle Salon's Mission for 100% Sustainable Salons by the year 2020 by clicking here: Green Circle Salons.

~ 100% of all hair clippings, a renewable resource, are sent to a boom manufacturer, used in the clean up of industrial oil spills. The booms absorb the oil in waterways and land, limiting environmental contamination and loss of wildlife.

~ 100% of all foil, plastic, color tubes and plastics that are NOT currently recyclable by local waste programs.

~ 100% of unapplied color mixture to be safely incinerated, instead of disposed in the sink or trash, keeping toxins out of the aquifers and landfills.

Green Circle Salons directly receives $1 from the $1.50 environmental fee added to your service ticket. Under the contract, Hello Curls Salon submits a monthly client visit report to determine the current invoice amount. The $1 covers their cost for collection, shipping and processing of the diverted waste items.

The remaining $0.50 will be deposited into the HCS Eco-Savings Account to cover the cost of participation in SMUD's Greenergy Alternative Clean Energy program for businesses and fund Hello Curls Salon in-house, 5-R, super-green practices:

1. Collect cold, not-yet-to-temperature, shampoo faucet water to irrigate the courtyard garden, about 5-10 gallons a day. The difference in the courtyard garden after one month is a bloom-full sight to behold!

2. Take advantage of the natural light from the windows and turn off lights in empty rooms. LED bulbs for the lowest energy draw.

3. AC set to 78 degrees in Summer and 68 degrees in Winter, on a programmable thermostat. Open the windows for fresh air when weather permits. Use low-draw fans for comfort.

4. Washable and reusable items: dishes, glasses, hand towels. Filtered water and ice, no plastic bottle waste. Laundry washed in a high efficiency machine and line-dried when weather permits.

5. New, high-efficiency water heater. Saving up for a supplemental solar water heating unit, maybe as soon as next year.

6. Installation of easy-to-maintain, 50-year engineered floors, that are BPE and formaldehyde-free. No trees were harmed in the process.

7. Paperless bookkeeping, scheduling, client records, and receipts.

8. Hello Curls Salon has discontinued the use of color lines that require applied heat to process, also eliminating consumption of plastic processing caps. The new color lines are ammonia-free and the ingredients have been selected to eliminate potential allergens.

9. Cleansers and disinfectants, except those mandated by state law and the Board of Cosmetology, are plant-based, biodegradable, and eco-friendly. Because no combs or brushes are used, only a small amount of mandated disinfectant is used. Cleansers are bought in bulk at Refill Madness with reusable containers. Check them out for your household needs!

10. Pedal Powered! I commute by bicycle; a 91% emission reduction, compared to a car. Per year, I eliminate 2,236 miles of wear and tear on my car, free up space on the roads, save $1,308 per year in operating costs, including 82 gallons of gas just to commute to work. I also commute by bike to my daughter’s school, grocery store and most errands.

11. On-site bicycle powered generator is in the works.

12. More than 80% of the salon furnishings are from second hand and construction salvage charities, such as Re:Store and local thrift stores benefiting the community. Donation drives of unwanted personal care items to Mary House and clothing drives for WEAVE.